


Hidden Memories

by suffolkgirl



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suffolkgirl/pseuds/suffolkgirl
Summary: AU future fic. On the new colony of Earth, Laura Anders uncovers some long-buried family secrets...
Relationships: Lee "Apollo" Adama/Kara "Starbuck" Thrace
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This Earth colony is nothing like canon, as it was written between Seasons 2 and 3, so long before the end of the series when they sent all their technology into the sun. 
> 
> This was my first BSG fic.

Laura Anders looked up with a sigh of relief as the door opened and her Grandpa entered, weighed down with shopping bags. She jumped up to help him, casting a longing glance out at the sunlit grass as he closed the door behind him. She wished she could run outside and lie down on the grass, stare up at the sky until everything faded away.

But it wouldn’t fade away. Gran was dying, and there was nothing she or Grandpa or Dad or anyone could do about it.

“How is she?” said Grandpa, putting the food away in the kitchen cupboards. “Has she said anything?”

“Not really.” Gran had deteriorated sharply during the last few days, and her periods of lucidity were getting fewer. “She talked for a while, but I couldn’t really make it out. I think she was praying.”

The only word Laura had caught was Apollo. He was one of Gran’s patron gods, one of the two idols in her household shrine. Laura could remember Gran showing them to her when she was younger and telling her their story; Artemis the huntress and her twin Apollo, lord of the sun and healing.

The idols were by Gran’s bed now – they’d moved the shrine there when she became too weak to move. She liked to have them close, to hold in her hands when she made her sunset prayer. Gran never missed that prayer, whatever else was going on. 

Laura had often drifted off to sleep to the sound of that prayer, the list of names of the dead whom Gran asked the Lords of Kobol to watch over. It was a long list, but then Gran had lived through the destruction of the twelve colonies and the terrible escape from the Cylons. She’d lost more people than Laura could imagine.

It suddenly struck Laura with the force of a blow that she would never hear that prayer again now. Never hear that list of names, long forgotten by anyone except Gran, and now lost to everyone. She choked on a sob.

Grandpa heard and came over to her, putting an arm round her and making her sit down on the sofa.

“Are you all right?” His face creased worriedly. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with her, you’re too young-”

“I’m sixteen!” said Laura, affronted, and he grinned.

“I forgot. Practically a pensioner.”

Laura giggled, and the terrible pressure of tears receded for the moment. At least Grandpa Helo would still be here, after Gran had gone.

He wasn’t really her Grandpa, in fact. Her real grandfather was Gran’s first husband, the pyramid player. There was a picture of him on the mantelpiece, of him and Gran after their wedding on the doomed settlement of New Caprica. He was tall, handsome, confident. Gran was obviously teasing him about something, and he was looking down at her with a good-humoured grin.

He looked like a nice guy, and he had been brave, too – Gran used to tell her the stories, how he fought in the resistance on old Caprica, after the bombs fell. Laura often wished she had known him, but he had died a long time ago, when her father was only a baby - shot down by the Cylons after they occupied New Caprica. He hadn’t survived a second Cylon invasion.

Laura felt sad when she thought about it, but she had Grandpa Helo, and as far as she was concerned, he was the best Grandpa she could ever have wished for. He was full of jokes and stories, and always had a lollipop in his pocket for her. Now that she was older, she had found that he was easy to talk to, especially for things she couldn’t talk to her parents about. Grandpa didn’t judge; he just listened, and only gave advice if asked. It was usually good advice, too.

The phone rang and Grandpa answered it.

“Your Gran’s prescription is ready.” He put on his jacket. “I’ll just pop over and pick it up. It’ll only take me five minutes. Are you all right to stay with her?”

Laura rolled her eyes at him. “I’ll be fine, Grandpa. Dad will be here to pick me up soon anyway.”

He headed off, and Laura moved back to sit by the bedside. It hurt to see Gran lying there so still. Until she became ill, Laura had never realised just how old she was. She was always so vital, brimming with energy, arguing and laughing, the pivot around which the whole family revolved. 

The house smelled different now, too. No smell of oil paint as Gran worked on her latest picture, face scowling in fierce concentration, utterly oblivious to anything else. No smell of burning food as her latest culinary experiment failed and she kicked the oven door in frustration. No smell of cigar smoke as she winked at Laura and told Dad as he protested that if the habit hadn’t killed her yet it wasn’t going to, then dealt another triad card.

Now the house smelled of disinfectant, because Gran wasn’t around to cover it up, to make the house messy and lived in again.

Suddenly, Gran jerked in the bed beside her. She started to mutter, trails of words that Laura could barely catch and made no sense when she did. She shifted restlessly under Laura’s hands as she tried to tuck her in, to calm her down.

Then suddenly she sat bolt upright, eyes staring desperately at something only she could see.

Laura was scared. She’d never seen her this bad before. She grasped one shoulder.

“Gran, you have to lie down.”

Her grandmother began to shake violently, and then her mouth opened and she said one word.

“Lee!”

Laura tried to push her down, but without success. She looked at the door, hoping desperately Grandpa would walk through it. She couldn’t deal with this.

Gran’s hand fastened on hers with surprising force, fingers digging painfully into Laura’s skin. Her eyes were still fixed on the empty space at the end of the bed.

“Lee,” she said again. “Lee, don't leave me. Lee!”

Then the sudden manic energy sapped out of her, and she slumped against Laura like a puppet with the strings cut.

Shuddering with relief, Laura tucked her back in, and then Grandpa and Dad arrived within minutes of each other and she could pass the responsibility over.

She watched Dad fuss agitatedly over Gran, while Grandpa calmly phoned the doctor, and all the while her brain was turning.

_Who is Lee?_


	2. Chapter 2

The question nagged at Laura all the next day. It was the way her grandmother had said the name, with desperation, with raw loss – she’d never heard her practical, no-nonsense Gran sound like that before. Whoever this Lee was, he must have been very important to her – so why hadn’t Laura heard about him before?

Yet there was something familiar about the name Lee. She had heard it somewhere, but couldn’t place it. It was irritating, like a fly buzzing in the back of her mind.

Her father was in his study, working as usual, and her mother was on shift at the hospital. So Laura poured herself a glass of juice and sat on the grass in the back garden, soaking in the sunshine and thinking.

Who is Lee?

Not her grandfather Anders – his name was Sam. 

Not Grandpa Helo either – his name is Karl, though only Gran ever calls him that.

Not the Admiral either – his name was William, because Dad was named for him, just as she herself was named for the Admiral’s wife, who was Colonial President twice over and Dad’s mentor when he first went into politics.

She had died before Laura was born, but Laura could just remember the Admiral – a gruff, burly man with sad eyes and an unexpectedly kind voice. She could remember Gran breaking down at his funeral – the Admiral had been like a father to her.

“He lost all his own family in the war,” Laura’s dad had explained once. “And we’d lost my father...so we filled the holes for each other. He always treated me like a grandson.”  _ Just like Grandpa Helo and me _ , Laura had thought.

The Admiral had even left everything to Dad in his will. This house had been his. The name Adama was still carved into the front doorpost because Dad had never got around to changing it…

_ Adama. _

Laura nearly dropped her glass of juice.

That was where she had heard the name Lee before.

_ Lee Adama. _

It was the first name in Gran’s list. The sunset prayer list. The list of her dead.

He must have been related to the Admiral.

\---

She decided that her dad must be in need of a break, and invaded his study, bearing a cup of coffee as protection.

As she expected, his initial irritation at being interrupted gave way to a smile at the sight of the coffee.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, sweetheart.” Will Anders yawned, and stretched the kinks out of his shoulders as she put it down in front of him. “I need it. Some of these reports on crop irrigation are very worrying.”

Laura couldn’t help grinning at that. Dad worried about everything – it was a family joke. He fussed over details, never happy unless every single thing was precise and perfect. Sometimes Laura found it endearing, but it drove her mad just as often. Still, that obsessive, idealistic drive had made him the youngest government minister in years, one whom people were already whispering about as the next president.

Gran was fiercely proud of him, although to his face she pretended to be disappointed that he hadn’t followed in her footsteps as a pilot. 

“How can you not be interested in flying?” she would complain laughingly. “With all that pilot blood in your veins-”

Dad just laughed back, and said he had no interest in pyramid either.

Laura could see his gaze now dipping back to his paperwork, so she hurriedly seized her opportunity.

“Dad, have you ever heard the name Lee Adama?”

He nodded, still looking at his papers. “Of course. He was the Admiral’s son.”

“His son?” Laura was confused. “You mean the one Gran was engaged to?” He was another photo on the mantelpiece, another one of Gran’s stories. “But...I thought his name was Zak.”

“It was,” Dad murmured absently. “Lee was the Admiral’s other son. The older one.”

“And what happened to him?”

That got his attention. He stared at her incredulously.

“What happened to him? Laura, are you serious?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Do you pay no attention at school?” Her father sighed heavily. “They must have covered it in Colonial History.”

“They probably did...” Laura trailed off awkwardly. Her history teacher had an unbearably droning voice, and she usually spent the lessons drawing on her sketchpad.

“You’re too much like your grandmother, that’s the problem,” her father said ruefully. “Only bothering to learn about the things that interest you. But I can’t believe you’ve never heard about the sacrifice of the Pegasus. I know Mum doesn’t like talking about that time, but Helo’s always reminiscing about New Caprica and rescuing the colonists.”

“The Pegasus?” Something stirred in Laura’s brain. “You mean...the ship that was destroyed by the Cylons during the escape from New Caprica?”

Dad nodded. Laura remembered it now – of course she’d heard the story. The Pegasus had been badly damaged, its weapons destroyed and FTL drive damaged beyond repair, watching helplessly as a Cylon basestar bore down on the rest of the fleet. In desperation, the commander had used the ship as a battering ram to destroy the basestar, giving the Galactica and the rest of the fleet the precious moments they needed to jump safely away. Without that sacrifice, none of the fleet would have survived, and then there would have been no Earth colony – no Laura.

“I remember now,” she said. “Was Lee Adama on the Pegasus?”

Her father sighed. “He was the commander of the ship, Laura.”

“But...I thought the commander’s name was Apollo?” She was sure she remembered that much.

Dad had that long-suffering look on his face again. “Well, obviously Apollo wasn’t his real name, Laura. It was his callsign. Like Helo. Like Starbuck.”

“Oh.” 

_ Apollo _ . Gran had been murmuring that name yesterday. Perhaps she hadn’t meant the god after all?

“Why are you asking, anyway?” Dad said, sipping his coffee.

“When I was sitting with Gran yesterday, she mentioned his name.”

“Oh.” Her father went very still, and the pain in his eyes made Laura’s chest ache. Dad and Gran had only had each other for so long – it was going to break a part of him when he lost her. “I suppose that makes sense. They were close friends, I remember Helo telling me. He was her wingman, at the start of the war, and I’m told they were practically unbeatable when they flew together. They still use some of their manoeuvres in training at the new Fleet Academy. It must have been hard for her when he was killed...not that long after my father either. To lose both your husband and your best friend within a few months...she said to me once that if it hadn’t been for me, she didn’t think she would have survived.”


	3. Chapter 3

The following afternoon, Laura sat with Gran again while Grandpa Helo went out for a walk. It wasn’t good for him to be cooped up in the house all day, she told him, and he laughed and said she sounded like his mother.

Laura knew he thought she must get bored, sitting with Gran for so long; but she didn’t. She was never bored in Gran’s house when there were all Gran’s paintings to look at. She saw that Grandpa had moved Gran’s favourite one opposite her bed where she could see it. It was Laura’s favourite too – two vipers, one black, one white, circling nose to nose, dancing in a starry sky. 

Gran was quieter today; there was none of the violent distress that had upset Laura so much a few days earlier. She murmured from time to time, but nothing understandable.

Until about an hour after Grandpa Helo had left, when Laura felt a sudden tug on her hand. She looked down to find Gran’s familiar hazel eyes staring up at her, with a spark of lucidity for the first time in days.

“Gran?”

“Laura…” Gran smiled. It was a weak version of her usual grin, but it was enough to make Laura smile in return. “Laura, I want...”

“What?” said Laura eagerly. “What can I get you? Some water?”

Gran shook her head. “Photo…”

“Which photo?”

“Photo…mantelpiece.” Each word was dragged out with an effort.

“Which photo? You and Grandad?”

“No…other one…Zak…”

Laura hurried to get it. It was the photo she had been thinking of yesterday, of Gran in the arms of her first fiancé, Zak Adama. Gran had told her about him, how he had died in a flying accident. Tears had gleamed bright in her eyes as she told the story, but being Gran, she had refused to let them fall.

Gran looked different in this photo from the one with Sam Anders. It wasn’t just the short hair – she looked younger, happier, carefree. But then that had been before the Cylon attacks, before the world ended in a blaze of fire.

Returning to the bed, Laura was relieved to see the spark of awareness still in Gran’s eyes.

“Here you are, Gran. Here’s the photo.” She pushed the frame into her grandmother’s frail hand.

Gran frowned. “No...no...take it out..”

“Out of the frame?”

Gran nodded. Laura supposed it might be too heavy for her to hold in the frame. She did as instructed, easing it carefully out of the frame so as not to tear it.

“Unfold it…”

It was indeed folded, Laura saw with surprise. One end of the photo had been tucked back into the frame, hiding another person standing on the edge of the photo.

“Give it to me...”

Laura stopped staring, and pressed it into Gran’s hand. Gran took the edge of the photo and smoothed her thumb over the face that had been hidden for so long.

“Thank you...” Her face relaxed into a smile.

Laura waited for Gran to say something more, but she didn’t; after a while, Laura realised she had drifted into unconsciousness again.

An hour later Gran’s grip relaxed, and the photo fluttered down onto the carpet. 

Laura picked it up, looking curiously at the third figure in the photo. 

It was a young man. Like Gran and Zak, he was wearing military clothing – Laura had seen the recruits at the Fleet Academy dressed like that when she visited Gran there. He stood some distance from the other two, and there was something stiff and awkward in the way he was standing. He seemed uncomfortable at being photographed; there was no smile on his face, and he looked tense and wary. There was something about him that tugged at Laura’s memory, although again she couldn’t place it.

A hand touched her shoulder and she jumped violently.

“Grandpa Helo! Gods, you scared me!” She hadn’t heard him come in.

He grinned at her. “You were thinking too hard, just like your father.” He sat down next to her. “What are you looking at, anyway?”

“This.” She passed him the photo. “Gran woke up for a while. She asked for the photo and told me to take it out and unfold it. I never realised there was someone else in the picture.”

Grandpa didn’t seem surprised as he looked at the photo. Instead he smiled sadly.

“I should have known.” He took Gran’s hand and squeezed it. “Don’t worry, Kara,” he said softly. “You’ll be with him soon.”

“Who is it?” Laura knew she should keep quiet and not intrude, but her curiosity was overwhelming. 

Grandpa sighed. “It’s someone your grandmother lost a long time ago.”

Laura took a deep breath. “Was his name Lee Adama?”

Grandpa’s gaze flashed up to hers. “Why do you say that?”

Laura almost flinched at his tone. She had never heard him speak so harshly.

“The other day...Gran was calling for him. Asking him not to leave her…”

“I see.” The hard look faded from his face, leaving grief behind. He reached forward and smoothed a lock of hair off Gran’s face. “She’s getting weaker now, I suppose, faltering...things are starting to slip out.”

Laura would have demanded to know more, but at that moment there was a knock on the door. Grandpa went to answer it, while she stared again at the man in the photo. 

She was sure it was Lee Adama.

She could hear Grandpa greeting her dad at the door. “Come in, Will.”

“Any change?” Her father was trying not to sound hopeful.

“Not really...she came round for a little while earlier, spoke to Laura, but now she’s unconscious again...”

Laura looked up from the photo as her father came into the room. He hovered in the doorway for a moment, tense and awkward. “She looks so frail…”

Grandpa came up behind him. Despite his age, he still loomed over her father. “I know. Come on, Will, sit down. Talk to her. She may be able to hear you, even if she can’t respond.”

Her father sat down on the opposite side of the bed and took his mother’s hand. 

“Mum, it’s Will. I’m here.” 

He looked up and smiled comfortingly at Laura.

Laura tried to smile back, but her face felt frozen. For a moment there, as he stood in the doorway, she had thought…

…she had thought it was the man in the photo come to life.

She looked down again at the photo in her hand. Dad had been standing in the exact same pose. And now that she looked closely at the man’s face, she realised why he looked familiar…

She looked back at her father opposite her. His hair was fair, not dark, but otherwise...it was nearly the same face. The nose, the line of the forehead, the angle of the jaw…

And Dad’s eyes. The bright blue eyes that Laura had inherited, that stared back at her every time she looked in a mirror, that were now looking up at her from a photo taken decades ago on a far-away planet that was now reduced to ash.

She thought perhaps she should say something, but she didn’t know what to say. Was it even true? Was she imagining things?

She needed to think about this.


	4. Chapter 4

Gran never regained consciousness. She died two days later, with Laura, Grandpa Helo, and Laura’s parents at her side.

The temple was packed for the funeral. There were Gran’s friends, colleagues, all the students she had taught to fly, both in the fleet and here on the Earth colony. There were others too, people who had known Gran only by reputation – Starbuck, the fleet’s finest pilot, who had rescued the Arrow of Apollo to show them the way to Earth. She was a legend in the colony, and everyone wanted to honour her memory.

The next few weeks seemed to pass in a blur for Laura. Between her grief for Gran and her worry about her father, who had been stiff and remote ever since she died, she forgot about the photo and the mysterious Lee Adama.

Then, a few months after the funeral, she found the other photo.

She’d offered to start packing away some of her grandmother’s things. Grandpa Helo hadn’t said anything, but she knew it was too much for him to face. 

The photo was in an old wooden box, tucked away in the bottom of Gran’s wardrobe. It was so dusty it obviously hadn’t been opened in years. Laura lifted the lid curiously and found an odd collection of things within.

Her grandmother’s military dogtags. A silver ring. A Caprican cigar. An old-fashioned music tape. A pair of pilot’s wings. A pyramid ball.

And the photo.

Laura almost didn’t recognise her grandmother. She was wearing a dress. Not just any dress, but a slinky blue evening dress. She looked beautiful.

The man she was dancing with looked equally handsome in his perfectly creased military dress uniform. It took Laura a moment to recognise him too, because he was smiling in this photo. A boyish, charming smile that transformed his whole face.

She wasn’t surprised her grandmother was smiling back.

There was something about her smile that made Laura’s breath catch. In the other two photos – with Sam, with Zak – her grandmother looked happy. Looked comfortable, secure. But in this one...she looked joyful. She glowed.

Laura couldn’t remember ever seeing her grandmother glow.

She only realised she was crying when the tears dripped onto her hands.

\---

It was Grandpa Helo who found her at the cemetery, curled up in front of her grandmother’s headstone.

She had been there for hours, reading the inscription over and over.

_In loving memory of Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace, mother of William, grandmother of Laura, wife of Karl and Sam._

Anger building up in her each time she read it.

Grandpa Helo wasn’t happy.

“Laura, what are you doing out here? You’ve been gone for hours! Your parents are frantic-” Then he saw her red eyes, and softened his tone. “Oh, Laura. What happened?”

She got up to face him, eyes burning. “I found this.” She thrust the photo at him.

Grief twisted his face as he looked at it. “Laura-”

“ _He’s_ my grandfather, isn’t he? Lee Adama! Not Sam Anders at all.”

Grandpa looked at her warily. “Laura, you’re upset. I don’t know where you got this idea-”

“Don’t lie to me!” she shouted. “I know it’s the truth. That man – Lee Adama – looks exactly like Dad.”

Grandpa sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I can’t deny that. Very well, Laura, you’re right. He is your grandfather.”

Laura staggered slightly, taken aback. She hadn’t expected him to just admit it.

“But then...why did you all pretend otherwise?”

Grandpa sighed. “Because your father was born while Kara was married to Sam. She hardly wanted to announce to everyone she’d betrayed him, still less when he had died saving her. And then, when Lee died too...it didn’t seem to matter any more.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “And...in a way, it wasn’t really a secret. As you say, Will looks a lot like Lee. Everyone on Galactica had known Apollo...they could all see the resemblance, but no-one ever said anything. It was easier to stay silent.”

“The Admiral must have known,” said Laura. “That’s why he was so close to Gran and Dad, wasn’t it? Why he left everything to Dad in his will?”

Grandpa nodded. “Oh yes, the Old Man knew. No doubt of it.”

“Does Dad know?”

Grandpa shook his head. “No. And you are not to tell him.”

Laura stared at him in disbelief. “Why not? Gods, surely he deserves to know the truth!”

“Why?” said Grandpa sharply. “What good would it do? Will has been perfectly happy all these years, believing Sam was his father. After all, he never knew Sam or Lee, and he had me and the Old Man as father figures as he grew up.”

“But surely he’d still like to know-”

“No.” Grandpa’s voice was adamant. “It would do nothing but upset him. It would shake the whole foundations of his world, if he found out. He’d feel that he wasn’t the person he thought he was, that everything he believed about his mother was a lie.” He laughed bitterly. “Will’s too much like his father, that’s the irony of it. He sees the world in black and white, and he wouldn’t be able to understand how Kara could betray Sam like that, how she could lie about it all these years. He’d never forgive her for it, and it would twist him.”

Laura wanted to argue with him, but much as she hated to admit it, she could see the truth of what he said. She knew her father. He would react like that. It would tear him apart.

“I understand,” was all the defiance she could muster, and Grandpa smiled, accepting her defeat.

“That’s because you’re more like Kara. She would always try to understand, even if she didn’t approve. It was one of the qualities I most valued about her.”

“Then tell me what happened, Grandpa. I don’t understand.” Laura took the photo back from him. “She loved Lee. You can see it in this photo. So why did she marry Sam Anders?”

Grandpa sighed. “You would pick the most difficult question to start with. I’m not even sure I know the true answer, but I think...I think the heart of it was that she loved Lee too much and it frightened her. Sam seemed like a safer option.”

Laura frowned. “Gran was never a coward.”

He smiled ruefully. “No she wasn’t...except when it came to Lee Adama. He was the exception to everything in her life, just as she was the exception to everything in his.”

“So she did love him,” said Laura slowly.

“Oh, yes. First and last and every day in between. I could see it from the first time I saw them together. They were like two halves of one person. They finished each other’s sentences, were always there instinctively to back the other up if needed. And in the air...well, they were a wonder to watch in the air.” He sighed. “Kara always blamed herself for his death, you know. She was convinced that if she had been with him to help, he wouldn’t have died. I never could persuade her otherwise.” He walked forward to touch the gravestone gently. “You always did take everything on yourself, Kara.”

“Dad told me that she said once that she wouldn’t have survived after New Caprica if not for him.”

“It’s true. She was never the same after Lee died. I think she would have followed him, got herself blown up on some crazy mission, if not for Will. Because while she had him, she still had a piece of Lee left.”

Laura stared at him. She didn’t understand him at all. This was his wife he was talking about, his wife of thirty years standing. How could he stand there and talk so calmly about her loving someone else?

“Don’t you care?” she burst out. “That she always loved Lee? Didn’t you mind?”

He shrugged. “Not really. She loved me, too...just differently. And besides...I understood. You see, she wasn’t the only one who had lost the person they loved the most.”

Laura was silenced. She had never thought that there might have been someone else in Grandpa’s life before Gran. She felt as if she had never seen him before.

“Why are you so angry about this?” said Grandpa, after a moment. “What does it matter to you? It’s all ancient history, surely, nothing to get upset about. Yet you were on the edge of an explosion when I found you.”

It burst out of Laura without thought. “I’m angry for Lee.”

That shocked him. “For Lee? I don’t understand.”

“Everyone forgot about him.” Laura felt tears rising in her throat and swallowed them down. “No-one ever mentioned him. Once he was dead, you all just...hid him away. I’m his granddaughter and when I first heard his name I didn’t even know who he was!”

Grandpa stepped forward. “Laura-”

“Gran folded his picture away like he didn’t matter!”

“That’s not why she did it. It was because he mattered too much, she couldn’t bear to talk about him-”

“Even his father forgot him,” said Laura bitterly, ignoring him. “He had his grandson, after all.”

“The Old Man never forgot Lee,” said Grandpa flatly. “I won’t let you say otherwise.”

“How do you know?”

Grandpa smiled. “When he set up the new medal of honour he founded, for outstanding courage in battle, what did he name it?”

“The Order of Apollo,” said Laura slowly, beginning to understand. 

“And the date the President – his wife – picked for War Remembrance Day...that was the date the Pegasus was destroyed.” 

“I didn’t realise.”

“They never forgot him, Laura,” said Grandpa softly. “Neither did Kara. I can promise you that.” He smiled wryly. “After all, the last thing she did was to ask for his picture. I always knew her last thoughts would be of him.”

Laura bit back tears again. “But then...then it’s not fair.” She looked back at the headstone.

Grandpa frowned. “What’s not fair?”

“If everything you’ve said is true, then Lee was the most important person in her life. The person she loved the most. And he’s not on here. I am, you are, Dad is, even Sam is...but not Lee. It’s wrong.”

Tears were gleaming in Grandpa’s own eyes now. “Look again, Laura.”

“At what? I’ve read the words ten times already.”

“It’s not words. It’s a symbol.”

“A symbol?”

“Below the words.”

Laura looked. She hadn’t noticed it before, but Grandpa was right. Below the inscription a symbol was etched into the stone. A bow, entwined with a lyre.

“I don’t understand. What is it?”

He sighed. “They really don’t teach you anything at school nowadays, do they? The lyre is the traditional sign of Apollo...and the bow is that of Artemis.”

Laura looked closer. “There _are_ words. Tiny letters encircling the symbol. It’s not Caprican though.”

“No. It’s the ancient language of the scrolls. Your grandmother understood it.”

“Gran?” She stared at him. “You mean...she asked for this to be done?”

He nodded. “She planned it all out when she first took ill.”

Laura took a deep breath. “So what do the letters say?”

He smiled. “They say ‘ _Starbuck and Apollo, together again_.’”

\---

Laura took Grandpa Helo’s advice, and never said anything to her father about her discovery. She tucked the two photos of Lee safely away, and never showed them to anyone.

When Laura gave birth to a daughter, ten years later, everyone expected her to name the baby girl Kara, after her famous grandmother.

No-one understood why Laura chose instead to name her Lea.


End file.
